Riverbend Journal

  A picture from  Claude depicting where I will be for the next week. He apparently isn't as gifted of a painter as Microsoft's Bing AI .

Although few details were offered, McComb and Taylor weren't on the lamb for long and the Sheriff and a posse of seven men caught up with the pair about two miles south of Portland in Van Buren county, about 20 miles away, three days after their escape. The Sheriff and the posse successfully brought the pair back the same day and ensconced them back in their cells with their shackles once more back on. Four days later, another mob started forming. An estimated 300 men, mostly from Wapello county but a few as far away as Keokuk county, began forming in an attempt to bring about justice in the form of hanging McComb. According to witnesses, many were from the July mob that had unsuccessfully tried the same thing. But when the mob made it's way to the jail, they found it well guarded, they had second thoughts about retrieving McComb by force and so appointed a committee to request that Sheriff Derby resign his office or at least put up a resemblance of a fight why they stripped th...

William Hix Wells, Maud Orinda Wemple and five of their eight children I have begun to turn my focus onto my 2nd great grandparents in my quest to write up a set of notes on my ancestors with the sum total of my research. Above are two of my 2nd great grandparents with my great grandmother Dorothy, sitting on William lap on the left and three of her older sisters and younger brother. This picture was taken probably 1906 when the young boy, Myron was born earlier that January. In the process of doing notes, one of my first steps is to look up an obituary if possible and indeed I found one for my great great grandmother Maud. As I was reading through it, I was shocked to see that she was a member of the Daughter's of the Confederacy. Older readers will know that I have sought out Confederate ancestors to see if there were any slave holders among them but to day, I have found not a single one though I have identified one family that moved from the Virginia area right at the start of t...

  Victor Stephen Kuck In my quest to write research notes on my ancestors, I started writing them on the one great grandfather whom I got to meet in person and have 12 years of memories with, Victor Kuck. I thought I knew everything I could know about the man because I often talked to my grandparents about him and even his wife, my great grandmother, for many years after Victor's death. I assume that I also talked to him but I have no memories of those conversations, only one sided ones I had with him after a stroke left him uncommunicative. I also have my great great grandmother's memory album full of newspaper clippings on those around her including dozens of them about her son Victor.  After compiling all the information from various typical genealogy records like census, birth, marriage, death and military records, I am of the habit to do one more search for newspaper articles on the person at hand, in case I might turn up something interesting or unknown. Also, all the ne...

After a nearly all night grilling session by Sheriff Derby, son George finally confessed to the truth.  Both McComb and Taylor had repeatedly over the months, shared gifts of fruit they received from visitors with George and he had reciprocated by volunteering to purchase things that the prisoners desired, often allowing George to pocket some of the change. At the same time, the prisoners told George of all their plans to see the world when their trials were over, often involving shows, circuses, and theaters. George, like most 11 year old boys, got caught up in the excitement so when they offered him a large sum of money to help them escape and even promised to take George with them to see all these marvels that he had only read about or heard others talk of seeing.  After weeks of grooming, the date of their escape had been set for Monday, August 22, 1864 but when the prisoners heard of Derby's departure to Keokuk the following day, when Deputy Sheriff Jones would be watchin...

26 April 1919 It is tough at times to remain impartial when researching one's ancestors. So when a newspaper search pulled up this article of one of my great grandfathers, it was initially a bit dismaying. Who wants an ancestor known for cruelty, even if the acts themselves were never defined? Before finding this, I knew my great grandfather had been married prior to marrying my great grandmother but didn't know any of the circumstances of why the first marriage didn't last. I only knew, the one child he had through his first marriage, grew up in my great grandfather's household so I guess I assumed an untimely death. That turned out to be correct but not in the manner I had been thinking.  In preparation of writing up a set of research notes for this set of great grandparents, I decided to look a little deeper into first wife Iva's life and see what I could find. I was not disappointed and it certainly shows that things can be complicated. 3 Aug 1920 Shortly after ...

I have a new guilty pleasure and I just have to share it since there are a number of my readers who fall into the middle or independent sector of our national politics. I came across Tangle while listening to a NPR program, I think it was "This American Life" but I'm not positive. In that episode, they were interviewing spouses who grew apart due to our recent political atmosphere and one couple, mentioned that their solution was to both read the same source of political news that they respected, in this case Tangle. Tangle is Isaac Saul's idea that came to him after searching for unbiased news sources on various political subjects. He would spend so much time looking for opinions on both sides of the political spectrum in order to formulate an opinion based on facts, that he wished there was a one stop place he could go to. There wasn't one and so he created his own . On his website linked above, one can find almost daily posts with good articles written by autho...

  Great Grandfather Dewey (center), Great Grandmother Bernice (right) and family Everyone had eight great grandparents and I had the great fortunate to meet five of mine personally though I have only memories of two of them. I have pictures of me in the arms of all four of my great grandmothers and only one of my great grandfathers. Three of my great grandfathers were dead, two who died months before I was born and Dewey above, who died about 16 months prior to my birth, so possibly the only one who never knew of my existence, even in utero. As part of my genealogy goals, I would like to create a set of research notes for all my ancestors for a couple reasons. They provide a blueprint of everything I know about an ancestor and perhaps the most compelling reason, I haven't created a set of research notes and not discovered something about that ancestor that had been unnoticed up until that point. Dewey was no exception. Of all my great grandparents, I knew the least about this coupl...

Nearly a month after McComb's near lynching, things had settled down enough that Sheriff Derby was planning on traveling to Keokuk on the train where he would meet his wife and ride back with her later that afternoon. Derby and Deputy Sheriff H.B. Jones shared the duty of caring for the prisoners during the day and monitoring things at night, on alternating days. Derby's absence to Keokuk would fall on the day, Tuesday, when Jones was in charge so there shouldn't be any issues. Even if something were to come up and Derby was unable to get back for his shift, Derby's 11-year old son George would be able to monitor things until his return. Though young, George was fully trusted with the keys and was familiar with the prisoners, often hired by them to purchase things for them from time to time.  However, complications arose and the afternoon train returning from Keokuk had problems and it would be 8 p.m. Wednesday, the following day, before Sheriff Derby and his wife were ...

2020 Election Map by County If you will indulge me a second political post in a week, I would be grateful. For nearly two days now, while working on a project in my garage and doing my morning rounds through blog world, I see that a lot of people are missing the bigger picture. Everyone is wondering how people could elect Trump for a second time because he.... and then there is a long list of moral and legal shortcomings. Respectfully to those people, you are missing the big picture. What you should be asking is why Vice President Harris failed to resonate with her constituents to such an extent, they showed out in less numbers than the previous election. Not only did she fail to resonate, but the majority of voters found a convicted criminal with large moral problems better than the alternative.  I think the answer to this lays largely in the map seen above which is actually from 2020 when Biden beat Trump. The current map which I have seen on television but can't find a version n...

  22 October 2024 The day following my concussion, I finished the tasks at hand. Namely I got the fence around the strawberry beds hopefully deer proof until spring when I can hook the electric fencer back onto it. I hauled away the tomato vines and okra trees to the compost pile to compost. From past experience, neither degrade enough over winter to really till well the following year and mostly just get tangled in the tiller tines in big balls. I removed the last half of the fence posts that supported the tomato cages, digging them out with a shovel and put everything away. As a final act, I mowed the straw and smaller garden vegetable matter, chopping it up into fine pieces and spreading it around to decompose in place and be tilled in come springtime. The remaining greenery are what is left of our egg plant and one nearly nearly dead pumpkin vine with two small and very green pumpkins. Since I will have to mow a time or two to mulch up the leaves that pile up on our lawn, I can...

Today is a day that I look forward to every four years. For some reason, the whole democracy thing, voting, staying up late and watching the returns come in while pundits analyze everything with a microscope, just excites me. It is like unwrapping a present from a stranger and not sure what you will find in the box when you get it open.  Lately though, this day is a double edged sword of sorts. In days gone by, the following day used to be a comment or two at the watercooler at work and then life went back to the way it was. These days however, the days, weeks, months and even years after the election are filled with people on the losing extreme side carping on social media about how the world is ending and spending their days finding fault instead of looking to find middle ground for a solution that benefits everyone. I wish those people could hear how ridiculous they sound. This has gone on for the last four or five elections and to my knowledge, I'm still here and the world hasn...

  Fence post driver image ripped from the internet After nearly five decades of fairly clean living, I managed to give myself a concussion for only the second time in my life. The first occurred only seven or eight years ago when someone blew a stoplight and hit me nearly head on. Fortunately it was at fairly low speeds at the time of impact so I only suffered from a mild case of whiplash, which my doctor informed me is the same thing as a concussion. I hoped at the time that would be a one and done event. Nowhere in my wildest did I think I would ever give myself a concussion with my own hands! While cleaning up our garden for the year, I noticed the deer had trampled over our garden netting fence and trampled through the strawberry beds. I guess they did it just to see what my reaction would be. Besides uttering a few choice words which I can't repeat here, I decided to reinforce the fence by putting metal fence posts in the corner to allow me to stretch it so it couldn't sag...

Two weeks before the sentence of B.A. McComb, to be hung until dead, was to be carried out, a stay of execution was issued by the Iowa Supreme court until the case could be heard on appeal, most likely not until the December term. This information was duly passed on to Judge Trimble who passed it on to Sheriff Derby. The public however, was in the dark about this stay of execution. By mid morning of July 27, 1864, the streets of Ottumwa were quickly filling up and by noon, they were said to be crowded. It was a peaceful crowd of 2000+ men, women and children who presumably had come to see McComb hung. At noon, the time of the execution, the crowd centered around the jail and a dozen of the more vocal started shouting for the jailer to bring out the prisoner so that he may be hung.  Sheriff Derby became involved and a pushing match ensued with the Sheriff knocking down several of the ringleaders and calling for more assistance. Four high ranking citizens came to Derby's aid, Senator...